Month: January 2021

The New York Knicks were applauded for their restraint this offseason. Despite having a ton of money burning a hole in their pockets, new executive Leon Rose and the Knicks chose the patient approach — which has not always been the franchise’s M.O. — and avoided overspending on a role player expecting them to be a star amid a less-than-stellar free agent market.

However, given their struggles last year and the lack of high end talent coming into the roster, the expectation was that Tom Thibodeau’s first season in New York would be another lean one. The offense was the league’s worst in the halfcourt a year ago and a leap wasn’t to be expected in that area, and while Thibodeau’s presence figured to command a greater commitment on the defensive end — something the Knicks desperately needed — few expected them to be among the league’s best on that end.

And yet, the Knicks are 4-3 thanks to one of the best defensive units in the entire NBA, one that is third in effective field goal percentage against (49.3 percent) and sixth in points allowed per 100 possessions (106.3), per Cleaning the Glass. They have size and length across the board and use it effectively, replacing last year’s apathy on that end of the floor with what one might even call a tenacious appetite for playing defense.

Sustaining this level of play will be a challenge, in large part because of the energy required to do what they have been at the minutes their top players are being asked to play. R.J. Barrett and Julius Randle are logging 38.7 and 38.4 minutes per game, respectively, both good for the top-3 in the NBA thus far. While that’s a Thibs staple, it does run the risk of seeing players wear down as the season wears on. Even so, it should be applauded what the Knicks have done thus far even while acknowledging the potential for a drop-off defensively that would likely see some of their wins turn into losses down the road. Most notably, this is a genuinely fun team to watch, something few expected when they took a look at this roster.

Randle is leading the way, playing All-NBA caliber basketball through two weeks of the season and averaging 22.1 points, 11.4 rebounds, and 7.4 assists per game on tremendous efficiency (50.9/40.7/76.2 shooting split). The scoring and rebounding from Randle isn’t necessarily new, but this level of playmaking is, and that is the area that is really impacting this Knicks offense in the most positive manner. Randle’s always been a skilled scorer and a terrific rebounder, but up until this season, his career high for assists has been 3.6 per game. He’s more than doubled that to start the season, as the Knicks have gotten him not only to initiate his own offense, but to serve as an initiator for the team, something that is very much needed with their point guard rotation.

The Knicks are asking Randle to do a lot of ball handling at the elbow and on the perimeter, and not just for dribble handoff actions. Take this play from Monday night where Barrett comes around and Randle fakes the handoff, screens Barrett’s defender to create separation, dribbles in to keep his man from rotating down, and slips a bounce pass to Barrett for the and-1 finish.

Randle has five or more assists in six of the Knicks seven games (7+ in five of those), so it’s not a situation of him simply racking up a big night or two carrying his average. He has genuinely become an offensive initiator and playmaker for this Knicks team, and his scoring to start the season means he’s drawing extra attention from defenses. This means even when he doesn’t get the assist his passing out of doubles, Randle can get the defense scrambling and help create open looks after a few passes.

Around him, the Knicks are getting about what one would expect from Barrett, who still hasn’t found his three-point stroke, but is averaging north of 18 points per game and is a tremendous rebounding guard. Elfrid Payton is off to one of the most efficient seasons of his career, with 13.6 points and 4.6 assists per game on surprisingly good shooting with a 49.5 effective field goal percentage. And then there’s Immanuel Quickley, the rookie guard who has burst onto the scene in his first three game, providing a spark off the bench to the tune of 10 points per game that has Knicks fans swooning about a player many expected to go way later than he did in the Draft — New York turned heads, and not necessarily in a good way, when it picked him 25th.

There will surely be rookie moments for Quickley, and how long of a leash Thibs gives him to make those young mistakes remains to be seen, but the energy he brings to the offense has been hard to ignore, most notably in the comeback win in Atlanta on Monday. Quickley had 16 points off the bench, and for a team with big guards like Barrett and Payton starting, he provides a unique change of pace they simply can’t replicate with anyone else on the roster.

The fans that want Quickley to start are going to be disappointed simply because Thibodeau is going to roll with a veteran like Payton who plays terrific defense over the rookie, but the former Kentucky guard has more than earned solid rotation minutes with his play early on — and for a Knicks team that is playing well but is still in a future-facing situation, he should be given room to grow.

Throw in Mitchell Robinson continuing to be a monster as a rim protector and lob threat, as well as Austin Rivers providing stability and scoring to the backcourt off the bench, and you have a Knicks team that is pretty damn fun to watch when they have it rolling. We’ll see how long that lasts, but the good news thus far is that while they’ve had some lopsided losses, they’ve also gutted out some close wins over good teams in Atlanta and Indiana. Those results have been more impressive to me than the blowout of the Bucks when they caught fire from three, because those performances are more replicable than this team becoming the 2015 Warriors from deep on a regular basis.

The Knicks may not be able to keep up this pace, but for a franchise that has provided fans with little to get excited about in recent years, it’s a welcome sight to see. I mean, we even got a mid-regular season Mike Breen “BANG!” last night on MSG, which is exceedingly rare.

When Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin and his wife, Sarah Bloom, announced the death of their 25-year-old son Tommy on New Year’s Eve, the whole nation mourned with them. Many also quietly wondered what had caused his death. It’s not anyone’s business, of course. But when a young, seemingly healthy person dies unexpectedly at home, the question lingers.

Rep. Raskin provided an honest answer to that question in a way that is both heartbreaking and perfect. In a statement published on Medium, Raskin and Bloom shared the details of Tommy’s life so beautifully, it makes anyone who reads it feel like we knew him. It also exemplifies how to talk about a loved one who is taken by mental illness.

The statement opens:

“On January 30, 1995, Thomas Bloom Raskin was born to ecstatic parents who saw him enter the world like a blue-eyed cherub, a little angel. Tommy grew up as a strikingly beautiful curly-haired madcap boy beaming with laughter and charm, making mischief, kicking the soccer ball in the goal, acting out scenes from To Kill A Mockingbird with his little sister in his father’s constitutional law class, teaching other children the names of all the Justices on the Supreme Court, hugging strangers on the street, teaching our dogs foreign languages, running up and down the aisle on airplanes giving people high fives, playing jazz piano like a blues great from Bourbon Street, and at 12 writing a detailed brief to his mother explaining why he should not have to do a Bar Mitzvah and citing Due Process liberty interests (appeal rejected).”

The celebration of Tommy’s life continues with a list of the people who surrounded him with love and support. His passion for true liberty and justice for all and his desire to solve problems of injustice, poverty, and war is clear. He loved animals and fought for their ethical treatment. He was a staunch antiwar activist. He was sensitive and kind, while also fiercely dedicated to making the world a better place for all in it.

“He hated cliques and social snobbery,” wrote Raskin, “never had a negative word for anyone but tyrants and despots, and opposed all malicious gossip, stopping all such gossipers with a trademark Tommy line — ‘forgive me, but it’s hard to be a human.'”

That line, “forgive me, it’s hard to be human,” resonates with us all. It also helps explain why a young man with so much promise, so much passion, and so much support around him could die from a depression that led him to suicide.

Besides the incredibly touching way it was written, what strikes me most about this obituary is that it’s exactly what an obituary of someone who dies from depression should be. When someone dies of a physical disease, we don’t belabor the cause of their death. We mention it, we acknowledge it, but the focus of the write-up on their life is their actual life.

Tommy clearly lived an incredible life and was a uniquely remarkable person. The disease that ended his life, even in the way it did, did not define his life.

I’ve lost two family members who were in their early 20s—one to suicide and one to Type 1 diabetes. Neither of their lives were defined by the cause of their death. A young person dying is always a tragedy, but when we speak about people we lose to suicide, the wording we use matters.

The kind, funny uncle I lost to suicide was a year younger than Tommy Raskin when he died. I purposely choose to say “when he died” instead of “when he killed himself” because the latter implies conscious choice, and I don’t know how much of it was truly a choice on his part. With suicide, the intention is obviously there, but it’s impossible to know how much control a person actually had over it in the moment.

There’s little comfort to be found when a loved one dies of suicide. But it helps to understand that that depression, while largely treatable, is a sometimes-fatal disease. Suicide might be the mechanism, but the disease of depression is the cause, just as unregulated blood sugar is the mechanism for someone who dies from the disease of diabetes. There are treatments for depression, but sometimes the disease is resistant to treatment. We’ll undoubtedly get better at treatment and prevention of depression, just as we do with all illness, but the devastating truth is that sometimes people do die from it. While it’s tempting to blame yourself or search for what you could have done differently to stop it, the terrible truth is it’s not always possible to prevent.

Raskin’s obituary says this about Tommy’s passing:

“We have barely been able to scratch the surface here, but you have a sense of our son. Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.

“On the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people all over the world died alone in bed in the darkness from an invisible killer disease ravaging their bodies and minds, we also lost our dear, dear, beloved son, Hannah and Tabitha’s beloved irreplaceable brother, a radiant light in this broken world.

“He left us this farewell note on New Year’s Eve day: ‘Please forgive me. My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.'”

Tommy clearly made his mark on the world while he was here, which is more than many who spent many more years on this earth can say. May his legacy be carried forward by those who loved him, and may his memory be a blessing.

Chris Webber’s resume as a basketball star is one any young player would be envious of. During his 15-year NBA career, Webber stacked up the accolades, winning Rookie of the Year in 1994, making five All-Star teams, and receiving several All-NBA selections as one of the best big men of his era.

During the early to mid-2000s, he led a Sacramento Kings team that was one of the most exciting squads in the league in that period and was one of the few teams that pushed the Shaq-Kobe Lakers to the brink. But even before all that, Webber had already cemented his status during his Michigan days as part of the Fab Five.

Now, Webber is reportedly planning to produce a new television series that will chronicle his time at Michigan alongside teammates Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, and Jimmy King.

Via Orion Sang of The Detroit Free Press:

“What I think is different about it is I’ve never spoken about my time with the Fab Five,” Webber told The Hollywood Reporter. “There’s a lot of behind the scenes that not many people know about, and it’s about so many things. Hopefully I’ll be able to express those things, whether it’s about Detroit or the work ethic of the city and the factories — all those things that made us.”

Webber did not participate in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary The Fab Five, in part because he was required to stay away from the school following the infamous scandal that involved players allegedly accepting money from boosters. Howard, now in his second season as head coach of the Wolverines, will reportedly act as a consultant on the series.

(The Detroit Free Press)

The Weeknd has not held back his feelings about the Grammys and the Recording Academy since he somehow didn’t earn a single nomination for the 2021 ceremony (which look like it’s going to be postponed). He has called them out on multiple occasions over the past few months, and now fans believe he has done so again in the new “Save Your Tears” video that he released today.

In one scene that many fans on Twitter have interpreted as a shot at the Grammys, The Weeknd holds a golden trophy (which supposedly represents a Grammy trophy) as he performs on stage and eventually throws it away. Right before he does that, he sings, “I broke your heart like someone did to mine.”

One fan offered a compelling broader theory, writing in multiple tweets, “So Abel’s on stage performing, physically looking fake and not his true self. He’s performing for a crowd full of masked people. the crowd could symbolize the Grammys voters bc I don’t think we know who they are irl. Him performing for these masked people could symbolize artists having to perform and do things for the Recording Academy in order to get nominations, maybe even wins. His appearance, mostly his face, could mean that he has to be this fake person for these voters to nominate him.”

Check out some more reactions to the video below.

In an effort to raise funds for Democratic senate candidates Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff ahead of Tuesday’s runoff special election in Georgia, director Jordan Peele and actor Bradley Whitford got together for a virtual Get Out reunion, in which they talked everything from casting the film to working with Trump voters in Alabama during the contentious time before the 2016 election. During the lively conversation, Whitford asked Peele about rumors that the Key and Peele star had walked away from acting due to a “total lack of interest.” Not only did Peele confirm that he’s done performing in front of the camera, but he revealed his reason why, which involved an interesting metaphor. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“I like watching my movies. I can watch the films I direct [but] watching me perform just feels like, it’s a bad kind of masturbatory. It’s masturbation you don’t enjoy,” he explained. “I feel like I got to do so much and it is a great feeling. When I think about those great moments when you’re basking in something you said that feels funny. When I think about all that, I think I got enough.”

Giving up acting has allowed Peele more time to focus on his writing and directing, and he admits to feeling especially energized after seeing how Black audiences responded to Get Out. “I knew I was making a movie for the me that didn’t feel represented in the genre and for everybody, for all the Black people who are screaming at the screen, ‘Have some sense, get the fuck out of the house, get some Black people in here so somebody can do the right thing.’” Peele told Bradford. “When that hit home and I felt that, it was just extreme warmth. Everything else after that was just gravy.”

Unfortunately, audiences have a while to wait until Peele’s next directorial project, which won’t arrive until July 2022. However, he did executive produce the next installment in the Candyman franchise that’s set to hit theaters in August.

(Via THR)

In what seems to be an annual tradition, it did not take all that long for drama to begin popping up in the Sacramento Kings’ locker room. The team, which came into the season with postseason aspirations and has a 3-4 record at this early juncture, is dealing with beef involving the Twitter accounts of the dads of two players: Third-year big man Marvin Bagley III and standout point guard De’Aaron Fox.

Things started over the weekend when Bagley’s father hopped onto Twitter and told the Kings’ official Twitter account that he wants his son traded. While he has since deleted the tweet, he did retweet a post that included a screenshot.

Shortly after, a post by Tim Maxwell of The Kings Herald that highlighted tweets by Bagley’s dad and Richaun Holmes’ mother — the latter of whom expressed her admiration for the organization — saw an unexpected name pop up in the replies. Fox’s dad, Aaron, simply replied “trade him,” and while he did not specify who he meant, it seems pretty obvious he meant Bagley.

This happening under any circumstance would, obviously, be very weird, but the timing of it makes things a little more strange. After starting 3-1 (prompting excitement that maybe they were returning to their 2018-19 form), Sacramento has dropped three in a row, with Bagley’s dad’s tweet coming amid an eight-point loss to the Houston Rockets — the former No. 2 overall pick scored 12 points on 5-for-13 shooting with nine rebounds and played the fewest minutes of any member of the team’s starting lineup (25) in the game. On the year, Bagley is averaging 10.9 points and 8.1 rebounds in 24.9 minutes a night while shooting 35.8 percent from the field.

The latest chapter in all of this came on Monday night. The Kings got thrashed by Golden State, 137-106, which saw them get blown out from wire-to-wire — the team ended the first quarter down 17 points. Unsurprisingly, the question that loomed over all of it was whether the public statements by the dads of 40 percent of the team’s starting lineup might have played a role in all of this.

After the game, Fox got asked that exact question and was candid that he did not believe the two things were related at all. Via Jason Jones of The Athletic:

“I don’t think anybody’s out there playing basketball worried about two tweets,” Fox said. “And if you are, this ain’t what you should be doing because muthaf*ckas gonna tweet you every day of your life while you’re playing in this league. If that’s what you’re worried about, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

…

“One, it hasn’t been brought up,” Fox said. “Me, Marvin, Luke talked for five seconds because it wasn’t a big deal. But like I said, when you’re playing basketball if you’re thinking about what somebody said on Twitter, then this ain’t for you. I’m 100 percent completely honest with you when I tell you nobody’s thinking about that while we’re on the court.”

Head coach Luke Walton echoed this sentiment, saying, “I don’t think that was part of our play tonight. We just played bad basketball tonight.”

In a statement that zero Kings fans will enjoy or dispute, these sorts of things always seem to exist in the ether around this team — we’re just a few months removed from reports that Buddy Hield was not returning calls from Walton. Still, this one is kind of unfair to both Bagley and Fox, who are now put in this position because of their dads being too online. It’ll nonetheless be something worth monitoring as Sacramento tries to navigate this season with one eye on a postseason berth.

Jerry Seinfeld has been one of the keenest observers of the human condition for over five decades. Albeit most of his observations have been brilliant dissections of the mundane, most famously socks, chips ‘n dip, and sports jerseys.

However, earlier this month the comedian got serious on Tim Ferriss’ podcast, revealing the two routines that help him stay sane and creative in the mentally and physically draining world of comedy.

Ferriss is best known for his book, “The 4-Hour Work Week.”

“Weight training, and Transcendental Meditation. I think I could solve just about anyone’s life, and I don’t care what you do” Seinfeld said.

“I think your body needs that stress, that stressor,” he added. “And I think it builds the resilience of the nervous system, and I think Transcendental Meditation is the absolutely ultimate work tool.”

Seinfeld says that Transcendental Meditation (TM) helps him stay mentally sharp.

“As a standup comic, I can tell you, my entire life is concentration fatigue,” he said. “Whether it’s writing or performing, my brain and my body, which is the same thing, are constantly hitting the wall. And if you have [TM] in your hip pocket, you’re Columbus with a compass.”

The comedian practices TM twice a day or “any time I feel like I’m dipping,” he said. For example, if he isn’t feeling inspired during a writing session, he will meditate. “If I sit down and the pen doesn’t move for like 20 minutes, I know I’m out of gas,” he said.

In 2018, Seinfeld told Page Six that he and his wife, Jessica, have practiced TM for over two decades. “My wife and I have been meditating for 25 years. We’re happier, healthier, we look better,” he said. “I was ­5-foot-4 before I meditated.”

Seinfeld isn’t the only A-list celebrity who endorses the practice. Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey, Paul McCartney, Clint Eastwood, Mick Jagger, Russell Brand, Katy Perry, and “Twin Peaks” creator David Lynch are all enthusiastic practitioners.

Numerous studies have proven that practicing T.M. can help with stress, anxiety, PTSD, and hypertension. It’s also associated with an overall increase in life satisfaction.

However, the Maharishi Foundation USA, teachers of the trademarked technique, is often criticized for charging people to learn the practice. Some say it’s basically a traditional mantra meditation that can be learned elsewhere for free.

Seinfeld’s second daily habit is weight training.

“So it’s three times a week of weights, and three times a week, the interval cardio training,” he told Ferriss. “And there are a lot of days where I want to cry instead of do it because it really physically hurts. But I just think it’s very balancing to the forces inside humanity that I think are just, they overwhelm us.”

In the end, Seinfeld believes these two practices help him maintain his mental and physical health while improving his writing, which he calls “the most difficult thing in the world.”

“A lot of my life is — I don’t like getting depressed,” he admits. “I get depressed a lot. I hate the feeling, and these routines, these very difficult routines, whether it’s exercise or writing, and both of them are things where it’s brutal. “

Julia Fox was a clothing designer, a model, a painter, a photographer, and a dominatrix, all before making her feature-film debut in Uncut Gems. She’s fantastic in the Safdie brothers’ film, in which she plays Howie’s snorting-coke-with-the-Weekend girlfriend Julia, and she’s getting equally strong reviews for her performance in PVT Chat.

Directed by Ben Hozie, PVT Chat stars Peter Vack as “an internet gambler living in NYC who becomes fixated on Scarlet (Fox) – a cam girl from San Francisco,” according to the official plot synopsis. “His obsession reaches a boiling point when fantasy materializes in reality and Jack sees Scarlet on a rainy Chinatown street.” It’s about “freedom and fantasy, death and friendship,” and making authentic connections in the digital age.

But the main draw is Fox, who once told Vice that her job-swapping hustler mentality “comes from an instinct, a survival mechanism. I’ve just always been like that, even as a child, I was pretty much left to my own devices… I had to figure out how I was going to live, so for me, that’s where hustling stems from.” Here’s hoping her next hustle leads her to reuniting with Adam Sandler in the Jack and Jill sequel, Jack and Jill and Julia.

PVT Chat hits On Demand on February 9.

Given that Cobra Kai‘s an infuriatingly good revival of a 1980s-born franchise, there’s plenty of throwbacks to be found. Not only did the series bring back Chozen, Kumiko, and more this season, but a Twisted Sister concert pushes the plot in an unexpected way. There’s one 1980s-famous face that actually doesn’t appear in the franchise, though, despite some Twitter users initially believing otherwise when they thought they saw Anthony Michael Hall pop up in the jungles of Vietnam (as John Kreese’s Marine boss, Captain Turner) during a flashback scene.

Oh, that’d be something if true, right? Anthony Michael Hall portrayed not-Michael Flynn in Netflix’s War Machine (2017), so we’ve seen him in military mode, and he famously earned 1980s geek-cred as “King of the Dipsh*ts” in Sixteen Candles (1984) and other John Hughes movies, but he isn’t a The Karate Kid-franchise guy. At least, not yet.

So, who’s the actor who played Captain Turner? That’d be Terry Serpico. People couldn’t believe their eyes, and it’s hard to blame them because the resemblance is uncanny.

Hey, it happens, especially with a show that’s so skilled at seamlessly mixing nostalgia with appeal for the younger generations. Terry Serpico’s definitely doing the honors here, but surely, no one would be mad to see Hall pop up as a LaRusso Auto Group rival in Season 4, right? Make it happen.

Cobra Kai Season 3 is currently streaming on Netflix.

As of now, the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards are officially set to take place on January 31. However, it looks like that is no longer the plan: Citing “multiple sources,” Rolling Stone reports that this year’s ceremony will be postponed, with the rescheduled event intended to be held at some point in March.

This news arrives as California, where the ceremony is set to be held, is in the midst of a surge of coronavirus cases: The Los Angeles Times reported this morning that on January 4, the state set a new single-day record for new cases with over 74,000 of them.

Find the full list of this year’s Grammy nominees here.

This post is being updated.